


it fell about the lammas-time

by seaofeels



Category: English and Scottish Popular Ballads - Francis James Child, Henry IV Part 1 - Shakespeare
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Humor, The Battle of Otterburn, the occasional death threat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-11-27 10:33:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20946908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seaofeels/pseuds/seaofeels
Summary: It's all fun and games until somebody decides to go hunting south of the border, and somebody else plans a retaliatory sneak attack, and somebody else is left footing the bill for the whole mess. Kate just wishes he'd be a little more careful, that's all.





	it fell about the lammas-time

It’s too early in the morning for either of them to be awake, when the light trickling through the narrow windows is dim and gray with mist that the sun hasn’t burned off yet. Kate wakes to a loud knocking at the door and Harry cursing up a storm as he tumbles out of bed, and she knows it’s going to be one of those days again.

“I’m awake, I’m awake, what in God’s name is the matter?” she hears Harry growling at the door, and the inaudible murmur of whoever’s outside. Wild imaginings drift through her head: he’s been called back to Warkworth by his father; his horses are tearing apart the stables; his soldiers have gotten drunk on the harvesters’ beer and have started a brawl. Anything to take her mind off the reason they’ve been staying at Newcastle, which is - “Douglas is at the gates, as good as battering them to hell,” Harry grumbles in her direction, voice still rough with sleep as he jerks on his trousers and snatches his surcoat off the chair. Her heart drops as he fumbles with his boots, but when he glances up at her in the light of his single candle, he’s grinning. “Come watch?”

“If you die, I’ll not shed a tear at your wake,” she says. She’s a knight’s wife, she should be used to his running headlong into danger, but she still hates seeing him leave only to come back with half a dozen new scars. Though she tries to keep her voice light, she fails so badly that even Harry, notoriously oblivious, leaves lacing his coat to crouch at her feet. 

“Come, Kate, you don’t mean that,” he murmurs, laughter dancing in his eyes. “I should have thought I might merit at least one.” He kisses her hand quickly and stands to finish dressing. “Come on, get your cloak and come up on the battlements. You’ll not see a better fighter than James Douglas north of the border; I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” It’s on the tip of her tongue to say that she’s not particularly interested in seeing her husband chopped to bits even by the best fighter in Scotland, but he’s already tossing her all kinds of mismatched articles of clothing. A brilliant blue scarf lands in her lap, along with two kirtles in contrasting shades of vibrant orange and green, and he only laughs when she shoots him a vicious glare. 

“I will be too angry with you to even think of crying,” Kate tells him sharply, and tries to pretend that the ragged underside to her voice is from irritation, not fear. “I will come, though mostly against my will.” He kisses her then, a quick peck on the lips, bows with a ridiculous flourish, and swings out the door. It’s only when the tread of his boots is out of earshot down the hallway that she can force herself to swipe at her eyes and call for one of her ladies to help her with her laces. 

Even so early in the autumn, it’s bitterly cold on the ramparts. Her breath mists on the air, and the chill of the stone bites at her fingers as she peers down over the edge of the battlements into the fog below. There’s a vague shadow where she knows the road should be, and the occasional echoing jingle of tack and armor, to remind her that the Earl is waiting in the dim light. She tries not to let the thought of a shadowy warrior lurking in the mists bother her too much, but it’s not exactly easy to turn her mind to other things. 

Harry appears at her side in a too-cheerful clatter of armor, winks at her from under the edge of his coif, and knocks one gauntleted fist hard against the edge of the wall. She barely has time to wince at the clash of steel against stone before he’s shouting into the chilly breeze, “Douglas, what on God’s good earth do you want at this hour?” She would swat at him if they didn’t have an audience; she has no idea what he thinks he’s doing, taunting him like that -

“Who calls?” The Earl’s deep brogue comes up faintly from the mist. Kate can barely pick the words out over the wind, but Harry just laughs. 

“The man who’s going to light a fire under your heels and send you packing back north again,” he shouts, and adds before Douglas has a chance to reply or Kate a chance to hush him, “Sir Henry Percy, lord of this castle for as long as you intend to march your armies up and down around it. And my wife Kate!” Kate whirls on him in horrified astonishment, already regretting leaving their rooms, but there’s no help for it now.

“Ah, the Hotspur.” A long pause, and then - “You’re married?”

“Yes!” Harry still sounds so delighted by this admission that despite her exasperation she can’t help giving him a bit of a smile. 

“My regards to your gentle lady! It is unfortunate that I must make her a widow.” The smile drops off her face; there are no words for the look that replaces it. Her horror, at least, must have shown through loud and clear, because Harry glances at her and his reckless grin fades into something a little softer, a little guilty.

“He doesn’t mean it,” he whispers. Then, louder, “I’ve not been married a year, Douglas, give a man half a chance to leave an heir behind him! I assume you won’t be leaving until I’ve killed you?”

“Harry!”

“I don’t mean it either, love, it’s just how we talk - Douglas, you care to break your fast with us?”

“Harry, we are not inviting him inside -“

“I have eaten, I thank you; shall we settle this?”

Harry gives her a smile, a shrug, kisses her hand and leaves her standing on the battlements, looking out into the mist with her heart in her throat. He’ll be back. He’s a brilliant swordsman; he’ll be back. She’ll shout at him for running off without saying a proper goodbye, and for frightening her half to death, and he’ll laugh and beg her pardon and kiss her and spend half the night complaining about the feasts Richard will hold in his honor after he’s put down this Scottish invasion, because he’ll come back.

He’d promised, when he’d had to leave her the day after their wedding celebrations were over, that he would always come back to her, and Harry Percy never lies. She’s fairly sure he doesn’t know how to. So he’ll be back, after he’s done a little courtly challenging and waved his sword around for a few minutes. 

The sun is rising little by little; much of the mist has vanished and it’s light enough to make out the general shape of the Earl of Douglas outside, and in a moment her Harry joins him, easy and graceful on his horse, looking like one of the heroes out of the old ballads. It’s too far away to make out what they’re saying when they’re no longer shouting, but after a moment they pace apart, spears leveled at each other. Harry’s placed very, very well in the last two tournaments he’s had a chance to ride in, so she wouldn’t say she’s afraid for him - but the light is still dim, the grass is damp, and anything could happen. (Maybe she is afraid for him. Not that she’d tell him; he’d either laugh at her or be genuinely offended at the insinuation that he can’t handle himself in a fight.) 

The thump of hoofbeats comes faintly up on the mist, until they meet with a rattle - it doesn’t seem that either of them landed a proper blow. They’re already moving back into position, though, and in the second pass she can see with a wince that Harry’s taken a hit squarely on his shield. He sways a little in his saddle, but he’s always had an excellent seat. He should, after all the time he’s spent with that great brute of a horse. She knows that’s uncharitable toward the horse. She doesn’t particularly care. 

There’s a crack as they meet for the third time - Harry’s lance has shattered, though the Douglas is still in his saddle. Someone moves to bring out another, but Harry, impatient as always, drops the broken shaft and dismounts as easily as a man in several pounds of mail and plate can manage. The Douglas is a little slower; he seems a little shaken from the hit, but it doesn’t take long before she sees them draw their swords and draw together. Harry salutes, the Douglas answers, and then with a clash of steel that she can hear from the walls they go at it. She’s watched the fighting at jousts for years now, and she’s reluctantly forced to admit that the Earl is indeed an excellent swordsman - not that that’s a positive quality, when he’s threatened to make her husband a corpse. Harry lands a ringing blow on the Douglas’s shoulder, they part and reengage, and someone’s shield goes flying. A moment later, she can see with her heart in her mouth that it’s Harry’s. He takes a quick step back, the Douglas following closely, his own shield cast to the side, the ringing of their swords echoing off the walls. The thin morning light glances off their armor, shivers up and down their swords, brightens the gleaming tack of their restless horses, and gives her all too clear a view as the Douglas strikes Harry’s right arm so hard he nearly drops his sword. 

She can’t hear what they’re saying, though she can see moving lips and Harry’s typical scowl, even deeper than usual. They can’t possibly fight it out any longer - surely they’ll come to an honorable peace; Harry promised they were joking, that he’d come back. 

The Douglas laughs and raises his sword and Kate can’t bear to look a moment longer. When she forces her eyes open, stinging with tears she refuses to shed, she sees Harry, standing tall and proud with his sword at his side as the Douglas mounts. He canters off the way he came, and her Harry, her beautiful idiot Harry, sheathes his sword with a stiffness she can see from the walls and leads his horse back inside. 

His mail turned the worst of the blow, she learns. Two of the rings broke under the blade and nearly gouged through the padding underneath, but he has nothing to show for the battle except a row of already purpling bruises and a numbness that he swears will be gone by sundown. She’d planned to shout at him a little, for scaring her, but when she sees him swaying in the doorway, alive and safe, she can’t find it in herself to do more than kiss him over and over. 

“What, Kate, crying because I’m still alive to torment you?” he says, trying for a laugh as he brushes her cheek. She’s annoyed to realize that she really is crying, and he quails a little under her glare. “I’m sorry.” A pause, while he’s finding the words - “For leaving so abruptly. And for letting James scare you like that. I can tell when he’s in earnest and when he’s just making threats for the hell of it, but I can’t explain how I know. And I’m sorry.” She sniffs and dabs at her eyes, letting him wrap his good arm around her and kiss the corner of her jaw.

“You’re surprisingly articulate today,” she tells him, craning her neck around in an attempt to look him in the eyes. 

He laughs a little awkwardly, ducking under her arm. “I’m making a special effort because I have to tell you something you won’t like.” She twists fully around at that, glaring at him. “Agh! Look, we were fighting, you saw us going at it, and you heard how we were talking, and in the end James didn’t know how to get out of his threat without actually killing me, so he said he’d spare my life because he didn’t want to kill a man while his wife was watching, but - well, he took the pennon you made me -” 

“Harry!”

“- and I’m very sorry. I know you spent all last winter making it.” He has the decency to look ashamed of himself, and he has excellent reason to - Kate knows she’s far worse at stitching than most women in her position should be, but she just doesn’t have the knack for it, and the pennon had been the bane of her existence for months. She had thought he could at least have held onto it for a year or two. “I’ll get it back,” he tries. She just glares at him. “I will! I told James I wouldn’t let him leave England alive with it. He’s camped at Otterburn; I’ll run up tonight and steal it back before anyone’s the wiser.”

“Tonight? Tonight, Harry? Are you out of your mind? You just fought him this morning, and lost, by the way, which is why we’re having this conversation - you can’t go out again tonight. And you as good as told him you would be coming; he’ll be expecting you anyway.” Harry pauses, as though he hasn’t thought of that, and knowing him, it’s not unlikely that he hasn’t. She decides to press her advantage. “Besides, Ralph is still bringing up all his soldiers. You won’t have as great an advantage, even if you already outnumber them.” 

He sighs, but he doesn’t argue, and that’s how she knows she’s won. “I’ll wait,” he finally says. “I owe you that much, don’t I?” Of course you do, she wants to say, but he kisses her. She very nearly forgives him on the basis of his kisses alone; for all his trouble getting his words out he never seems to have trouble with that part.

Ralph Percy arrives that afternoon, and they have time for a hasty dinner during which she thinks Ralph is nearly an ace away from hurling a jug of wine at his brother over the whole Douglas fiasco, but they retire for the night without casualties. Harry collapses into bed early and rises earlier; she only catches a glimpse of him as he’s slipping out the door before dawn. She doesn’t see him for most of the day either; he and Ralph are busy with the soldiers that have come up from the Earl of Northumberland, and so she passes the day with her maids, already drafting up another pennon, in case the first comes back from Scottish hands in worse condition than it had gone out. 

She’d thought to see him at dinner that night, so it comes as a surprise when Harry appears from nowhere, dressed for the field, to kiss her hand and tell her that he and Ralph are taking their men up to Otterburn, and that if all goes well she’ll see him again in a week or so. It’s that if that she doesn’t like to consider, so she reminds him, just a little more sharply than is proper, that he had better bring back that pennon, and himself, in one piece. He laughs, and promises he’ll do his best, and disappears.

He doesn’t come back. He’s been gone for days and she’s running out of reasons for him to be so long about getting back when a messenger comes to Newcastle with the news that the English lost, and that Henry and Ralph Percy were both taken prisoner. When she hears, she’s not ashamed to admit that she nearly cries from relief; thankful at least that he’s alive. The Earl of Northumberland has already begun to negotiate their ransom, and if all goes well he’ll be home in time for the Christmas feasting. The messenger pauses, and then adds, looking a little awkward, that word has come down from Sir Harry for her: that he’s well, and that he misses her, and that she’ll need to make another pennon after all. 

“Is there any letter to bear back, my lady?” the messenger asks, looking somewhat nervous. Kate supposes her expression would have that effect. 

She doesn’t dignify his message with a response, just packs her things and rides back to Alnwick that day. Still, after two days of wandering restlessly up and down the castle, she starts another pennon anyway. She’ll never get better if she doesn’t practice, and she hardly has anything better to do with her time, and she is in no way doing it because Harry asked. It’s a beautiful thing; the Percy lion rampant in brilliant blue on a golden ground of delicate leaves and flowers. Harry absolutely does not deserve something so nice. She’ll probably threaten to give it to Ralph when they come back, and only let him have it after he’s apologized enough. 

She misses him. It’s not likely to be longer than a month or two at the latest, and he’s been gone from her side for longer than this, but she still misses him, even if he is an idiot who loses her things and sends her ridiculous requests from the bowels of a Scottish dungeon somewhere.

She’s pacing the walls of Alnwick late one afternoon, soaking up the last of the early winter sunshine, when she sees a lone rider coming up the road toward the gates. He has Harry’s build and seat, though at such a distance and wrapped so closely in his cloak it’s difficult to be sure. Of course, she doesn’t want to get her hopes up - there hasn’t been any word from the Earl of Northumberland, and she thought she might have at least heard of it at some point if Harry were expected home so soon. The rider looks very much like him, though. In the end, she decides that whoever is coming to the gates at least deserves a warm welcome and an invitation out of the cold, and even if it’s not Harry it wouldn’t do to be absent from greeting a guest. She’s outside anyway, and it’s hardly far to the courtyard. 

Turning the corner from the stairs down from the wall, she nearly runs into half the kennel’s worth of dogs, barrelling down to the gates, and that’s how she knows Harry is home again. Margaret and Blanche tear past her, barking like they’ve tracked down the boar of the century, with Eleanor hard on their heels - Marian trailing behind them, still limping a little from a squabble with a stray goose the day before. Kate finds herself bringing up the rear, with a good view as Harry drops from his horse into the middle of the swirling, howling storm of tails and legs and long tongues. Even from the other side of the courtyard she can tell he’s cooing to all of them in turn, endearments he’s far less likely to drop so lightly for her. Not that she’s jealous of their dogs. For one thing, even though the dogs can gleefully drool over him as much as they like, none of them can corner him against his horse’s flank and kiss him soundly, and have him kiss back. 

His beard has grown a little scruffy on the road, and his lips are cold and chapped, but when he throws an arm around her shoulders and pulls her in close he’s warm and solid and home safe and she really doesn’t mind. “Kate,” he says, quiet and rough, “Kate, I’m sorry.” He looks genuinely apologetic, something of a rare occurrence with him. 

“Enough about it, you’re home now,” she tells him. She’d like to remind him not to do that to her ever again, but she knows he won’t listen, and as much as she’d like to scold him she’d rather just kiss him until she’s sure he’s real. “I’m not letting you leave my sight until next May,” she adds. The king will, of course, call for him sooner than that. They both know she’ll be lucky to see him six months out of the year, but she still wants him to know how she feels about the matter. 

Harry, the beautiful idiot that he is, frowns. “I’m not taking you on the road with me,” he says, sounding so delightfully concerned that she can’t help laughing in his face. “Kate, you know you can’t come with me, it’s miserable traveling with an army and I wouldn’t wish that on you for the world, and you know I’ll be home as often as I can -”

“If I were serious, no amount of protests in the world could keep me away from you,” she warns him, “but I am joking. Now come in out of the cold before you and the dogs freeze solid.”

He blinks, and then smiles softly. “All right.” His horse puffs, like breaking a spell in a song, so that suddenly they’re grinning at each other, wide smiles and laughing eyes. Her Harry’s home, no matter how long he’ll stay, and she’s missed him. Judging by the way he doesn’t take his eyes off her during dinner, she’s fairly sure he missed her too. (Judging by the way he kisses her after dinner, she’s quite certain he missed her.) 

“I did some stupid things,” he admits later that night, after he’s gotten a hot meal inside him and is settling back into their rooms. “We didn’t wait for a rest before charging their camp, and the men were tired. It was dark, and they had the advantage of camping there for days before we arrived; they knew the field better than we did. I went charging in by myself, like an idiot.” He pauses. “I suppose I got the better of that old ass Douglas, though. He died in the battle. The new Earl is decent, but - ugh - we had an understanding and I hate fighting new people.”

“You sound like you miss him,” Kate hazards. She’s not entirely sure; his words seem to imply it, but his tone is clipped, dismissive. Harry doesn’t handle serious emotions well, though, and she can’t really piece together which it is. When he grumbles something unintelligible and tosses a pillow at the bed, she’s fairly sure he doesn’t know either. 

“I liked the routine,” he says after a moment. “I liked being able to predict him. We were hardly on good terms, but he was a good enemy, and I wish he hadn’t died, and I hope God puts a plague on whoever killed him.” He looks a little winded after his speech, so she rests her elbows on his shoulders and lets him pull her down to rest her chin on his head. His hair is still damp from rinsing out the dust of the road, but she doesn’t mind too much. He smells nice, after all. 

“How long can you stay this time?” she just asks, feeling as well as hearing his quiet grumble through the top of his head. 

“Not long enough.” He pauses, opens his mouth - she can feel a slight shift of muscle in his neck - and finally says, like the words are being dragged out of him, “I missed you.” She can’t help grinning wildly.

“I should let you be captured by Scots more often if you’ll always come back such a romantic.” He scoffs at that, but she ignores him. “From you, that’s practically a declaration of undying love. Just think, if they’d kept you a month longer you might be telling me I’m the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen.”

“You’re not,” he tells her immediately, and she gasps in mock affront, “but you’re the most beautiful wife I have. And,” he adds, “don’t threaten me with another month staring at the walls of the most dreary castle Scotland’s ever seen; you already have my undying love.”

“I’m very flattered to hear that I am, in your estimation, better-looking than the thirty other ladies you have secretly married across the continent,” she says, feeling more cheerful than she has in a long time. “And I am sufficiently pleased to hear you say so that I’ll forgive your running off for months with scarcely a word of warning, after you promised to come back.”

He stops to think about that one for a moment. “I did come back, though.” Another pause. “And as I recall it, I told you I would be back in a week if all went well, which it did not, for reasons far beyond my control, and therefore I have not broken my promise at all.”

She’s not sure how to explain that it still hurt - they’re still learning to talk to each other, and she doesn’t quite think Harry would understand - so she just sighs and settles her arms more comfortably against his shoulders. She wants to make him promise her that he’ll never leave again, but they both know he’ll have to break that promise soon, and she doesn’t want to hear him tell her so. Instead she tells him about the ride back to Alnwick and how she’s spent the months while he’s been gone, and he tells her horrible stories about the food and the guards and the weather in Scotland until they’re both laughing themselves silly in front of the fire. 

“I made another pennon,” she mumbles, after they’ve blown out the candles and tumbled into bed, too tired to do more than whisper in the dark and elbow each other over nothing at all. “I’m going to give it to Ralph; maybe he’ll be able to hold onto it longer than you did.”

“Kate! You don’t mean that?” She feels the bed shift as he jolts upright beside her and has to roll over to muffle a laugh in her pillow. He shakes her shoulder while she struggles to hide her giggles completely. “Kate, I said I was sorry! You’re making fun of me, aren’t you?”

“I’m deadly serious,” she says into the pillow, and then has the wind knocked out of her when Harry rolls on top of her. Spitting hair out of her mouth, she adds, “And I’m about to be dead if you don’t get off me, you great oaf!”

“Not until you promise not to give that pennon to Ralph,” Harry says immediately, kissing her just behind her ear. Entirely against her will, she melts. “Please, Kate. I’m sorry for leaving, and I know I should have warned you, but I promise you I won’t do it again, and I’ll be more careful next time, and I’ll even tell my thirty other wives across Europe that you’re the only one for me.”

“So you admit to your infidelity, then.” He groans. “Harry, you can hardly expect me to give a work of art I slaved over for hours every day to a husband who has confessed to me that he’s married to thirty other women. It’s just not reasonable.”

“I offered to leave all of them for you,” he says, sounding actually offended as he rolls off her, and for a moment she’s dreadfully afraid that he really does have a string of lovers from Cambridge to Calais before she remembers that her Harry is too frightfully honorable to even think of such a thing. “I should have thought that might at least merit some consideration.”

“You shouldn’t have married them to begin with,” she declares, now that she has the freedom to breathe. “Leaving them is the very least you could do; you’ll have to do far better than that.”

“Right.” He sits back, shoulders back and full of determination. “I know you want me to spend more time with you, but I can hardly tell the king himself I’d like a leave from my duties to stay at home with my wife. I know you want me to be more careful, and I’ve promised to do that already. I know you want me to apologize, and I’ve done that. And I know you want me to leave my string of wives, and I didn’t have them to begin with, I swear. Though,” he adds, so earnestly that she almost forgets he’s flattering her in an attempt to wheedle her hard-won embroidery out of her, “even if I had a thousand, you’d still be the only one I’m in love with.”

“Liar,” she sniffs. “You’d rather you were married to your destrier and you know it.”

“Kate, I am not,” he says immediately, all wounded pride and defensiveness. “When have I ever lied to you?”

“You promised me, when you married me, you would always come back, and someday you won’t,” she snaps without thinking about it. They both pause, while the words sink into the darkness between them. Then Harry reaches out slowly, almost tentatively except that Henry Percy could never be accused of anything even remotely akin to tentativeness. She lets him take her hand, but she doesn’t even look in his direction. She means every word she’s told him, though she’d never thought to actually say it out loud.

“I suppose you’re right,” he finally says. “Would it be a comfort to tell you they’ll at least bring you my body in the end?” She tears her hand from his, furious. “All right, I deserved that. Kate, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” If she were a little less distressed, she might be thankful he’s at least apologizing; as it is, she’s too irritated with him for it to register. “Look, you don’t know I’m going to die in battle. My father has survived to harangue me to this day. Probably I’ll be the same, complaining to you that I want to go riding even though I’m half dead of gout and regaling our tired grandchildren with stories of battles they couldn’t care less about.” 

“You’ll never stop riding for love or money; you’re more likely to die in the saddle,” she tells him flatly, and he huffs a laugh. She’s not quite ready to forgive him yet, but when he reaches carefully for her hand she lets him take it again. 

“I’d far rather die in your arms,” he mumbles, with just the slightest of nudges to tell her he’s joking. He makes it difficult to be angry with him for long, she thinks in fond exasperation, and somehow his voice takes all the sting out of the idea of his wounded corpse brought back from the field to fade away in front of her. 

“Flatterer.”

“Kate, I speak my mind, and that’s God’s honest truth.”

She supposes, as he sets her pillow straight and pulls back the covers for her to slide underneath, that she’ll forgive him the promise he’ll have to break someday. She loves her Harry best for all his hard-headed honesty, but she’d rather hear a thousand lies, all telling her he’ll always come back to her, than hear him admit that there’s no knowing how many more years they’ll have together. And tonight he’s kept his promise: he’s home safe in her arms, not bleeding out on a field on the Scottish border like the old Earl was so many months ago. She won’t think about the day she’ll be the one widowed.

“I suppose Ralph can find his own pennon, then.” For the second time that night, Harry rockets up next to her, and though her smile is a little more worn and threadbare than before he still draws the slightest of grins out of her. 

“I’ll love you forever, Kate, light of my life, heart of my heart, best and most beautiful of wives -”

“I thought you already loved me forever?”

“I’ll love you twice forever,” he says promptly. “Twice forever, as long as I live and as long as eternity after that and then a thousand times that span again.” 

Harry Hotspur’s no flatterer. She’ll let herself believe him, just this once.

**Author's Note:**

> The bulk of this fic is based on the ballad "The Battle of Otterburn," because "Chevy Chase" is wildly inaccurate and significantly less popular anyway. Holes in the ballad have been patched with Vol. 3 of Froissart's Chronicles, and what's left is a delicate patchwork of me pulling things out of my ass. The Percies did not live at Newcastle as far as I'm aware and I cannot think of any good reason for Hotspur to have actually taken his wife along on a trip to put down a Scottish invasion, but I'm not about to leave Kate out entirely, so we're compromising historical accuracy for a (questionably) good story here. 
> 
> (And if you know where that stupid goddamn pennon is today - please let me know. I've been trying to find out what happened to it for three months now and it's driving me mad.)


End file.
